Industry utilizing fluids under pressure, especially the hydrocarbon processing industry, have particularly exacting audit requirements (such as OSHA 1910.119, for example), but the current (as of the time of filing) state-of-the-art in the hydrocarbon processing industry tends toward manual paper analysis and archiving and/or antiquated legacy data-processing systems. This combination makes compliance activities very inefficient, even when attempting to meet the minimum OSHA demands.
End users attempt to rectify this situation either by developing in-house software or by contacting outside vendors for help. This can be expensive, and thus may not be economical solutions to the problem.
Further, for the most part, the users are not much better off using the above approaches because such approaches lack the highly specialized engineering and software development knowledge needed to create integrated solutions that do in fact satisfy both OSHA and end-user requirements. Accordingly, the market needs a “Web-enabled” engineering software system that satisfies, OSHA 1910.119 audit requirements for pressure relief systems.
Thus, because the hydrocarbon processing industry has particularly exacting Process Safety Management (PSM) audit requirements, but the “current state of the art” in today's hydrocarbon processing industry tends more to manual paper or antiquated legacy data-processing systems, an improved means for addressing the audit requirements would be beneficial.
In an increasingly competitive environment, software technology must support the ability of operating units to improve process plant productivity (including for nuclear power plants), reduce cost and risk, and enhance manufacturing uptime. A new technology for hosting a broad range of new forward thinking approaches and tools that can meet and surpass these challenges is thus desired.